Church Officer Confesses to Stealing $600,000 : Moorpark: The treasurer says he began taking money in 1974. He faces up to four years in prison.

The treasurer of an evangelical church with an office in Moorpark astonished county prosecutors when he walked into the district attorney’s office last week and confessed to embezzling $600,000 in church funds over the past 15 years.

“We sat there listening, and everybody’s jaw dropped,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Roberts said of David Homer Lively’s confession.

Lively, 59, of Camarillo pleaded guilty Monday in Ventura County Superior Court to stealing the church funds. He faces up to four years in prison.

“This is certainly a unique one,” Roberts said of the case that came to light Sept. 24.

That was when Lively, accompanied by three officials of the Western District of the Missionary Church, walked into Roberts’ office. Roberts said one of the church officials reported how Lively had admitted to the group that he had embezzled $600,000 from the church during the past 15 years.

Lively then restated his confession to Roberts and two other officials of the district attorney’s office who were in the room.

Lively, in an emotional interview Tuesday, said church officials discovered the embezzlement scheme when they confronted him Sept. 24, a few days after a check from one of two church accounts bounced. Lively had been in charge of the accounts at Bank of the Oaks and Security Pacific National Bank, both in Newbury Park.

“I didn’t go in intending to embezzle money from the church. I just had a weakness and it multiplied,” Lively said.

He said his skills as a former bank accountant had helped him carry out his scheme through the years.

“It was no amateurish cover-up,” Lively said. “I know accounting. I’m not bragging, that’s just the facts of life. I made the books look pretty good, except there was no assets to back them up.”

But even Lively said he was flabbergasted that church officials did not find out sooner that he was embezzling money. The Western District of the Missionary Church includes 40 churches and about 7,000 members throughout California and Arizona.

Church officials declined to comment on the case Tuesday.

Lively said he began taking money from the church district about a year after he took the unpaid position of treasurer of the district in 1974. He said he and his wife were living in San Diego at the time.

Lively said when he took over as treasurer of the church district, he already had personal debts totaling about $100,000. He said several businesses that he operated in San Diego, including a real estate company and a computer firm, had folded.

Over the next few years, he said, he continued to take money out of church accounts to either open a business or try and save one. He said he periodically put money back in the accounts.

“I would take it out, and pay it back,” Lively said. “Finally, it got to the point where I was so badly beaten up by creditors I couldn’t put any more money back in.”

Lively said his wife, who worked as a secretary for the church district, only discovered a year ago that he had been taking money from the church. He said she immediately began putting her earnings back into the church accounts. He said she had even borrowed money from relatives to put into the accounts.

Lively, however, said his wife never knew how extensive his embezzlement scheme was until church officials confronted him.

Lively said both he and his wife, whom he asked not to be identified, have resigned from the church district and have voluntarily relinquished their membership in the Crossroad Community Church in Camarillo.

Lively estimated that about half of the $600,000 he took was in cash and the other half was potential earnings from church investments and interest on its accounts.

He said he lost all the money in business ventures and did not use any of it for personal gain.

“We haven’t owned any property since we left San Diego” in 1974, Lively said. After living in San Jose for four years, the couple moved to Newbury Park and eventually to Camarillo, where they rent a small duplex.

Lively said he hopes to keep a video business he operates in Port Hueneme and use his earnings to help pay back the church. Roberts said it is believed that Lively used the money he embezzled from the church to open the video business three years ago. Lively said he has no intention of filing for bankruptcy and has signed a note promising to pay the church back.

“I’ve got a desire--I’ve always had the desire--to pay it all back,” he said. “If I’m in jail, I can’t be making money.”

After pleading guilty Monday to the one felony count of grand theft by embezzlement, Lively was released on his own recognizance.

He is scheduled to appear before Superior Court Judge Kenneth Yegan Dec. 7 for sentencing. Lively faces a maximum sentence of four years in prison.

Lively, however, already appears to have won some sympathy from the district attorney’s office.

Roberts said Lively has saved the county the expense of a long, detailed investigation by confessing and pleading guilty.

“This case is a little more difficult to be cynical about as far as repentance and contrition,” Roberts said, “because he’s concretely demonstrated it.”

Lively said he feels a sense of relief since confessing.

“I’ve had 15 years of hell and a week of peace,” he said, trying to hold back tears. “I’m deeply sorry about it. What else can I say?”

Times staff writer Psyche Pascual contributed to this report.